Geeks Go-Karting!

A few weeks ago, an old acquaintance who I keep in contact with via Twitter, mentioned an upcoming event on the geek calendar that sparked my interest. Geek Karting would be a day of super fast go-kart racing for 32 drivers, followed by a BBQ at the Daytona International Circuit. Although not much of a kart lover myself (I was, quite frankly, terrified racing with my husband’s friends for his birthday) my husband loves karting and so, after some deliberation and arrangement of childcare, we found ourselves headed to Milton Keynes for the day, me with a bag of camera equipment in tow.

On arrival it wasn’t difficult to spot our group. I have never seen such a high ratio of iPhones to humans as I did in this group, not to mention some truly spectacularly geek tees and an impressive array of Converse. My husband immediately spotted the people he figured would be bothering the podium positions, these were the ones who had brought their own crash helmets. One helmet even had a camera strapped to it and another was emblazoned with the words “eat my pixels” on the back.

The event was mostly comprised of web geeks, many of whom are at the very top of their game. In point of fact, my old acquaintance Paul Annett is currently the creative lead on the new and wonderfully promising single-domain site for the UK Government (@GovUK), not a small responsibility. The event was promoted mostly through word-of-mouth, or more precisely, through tweets, meaning that everybody knew at least one other person present. I was interested to note that out of the 32 drivers, only one was female. Whilst naturally go karting does tend to be more of interest to men, there is a large number of women who enjoy racing too as evidenced by the on-site shop stocking some tasteful bright pink overalls. I’m not sure if the lack of women at Geek Karting came from the female geeks shunning the event as it was not to their taste, or simply that there aren’t that many female web geeks to begin with?

Geeks Karting

The drivers got plenty of racing for their money. An initial practise session of four laps was followed by three heats (six laps each although heat two was cut short) and an eleven lap final. After watching these guys race, I can honestly say that anyone who has a mental image of geeks as quiet, non-competitive types really needs to watch them race go-karts. These were very fast karts too, capable of reaching 60mph on the straights and on a track almost a mile long, some of the speeds reached were pretty impressive. What was even more impressive was the massive crash during Heat Two where @JamieKnight“panicked and pressed the accelerator instead of the brake” on one of the fastest parts of the track, and found himself and his kart buried deeply in a tyre wall, something I sympathise with after doing the exact same thing myself – although with an admittedly less impressive crash resulting. Jamie was even awarded the prize for “Most Spectacular Crash of the Day” at the awards ceremony at the end of the day. During the racing I spent my time trying to make sure I got clear pictures of each of the 32 karts as they flew past, not an easy task when they are moving at great speed and your ancient camera is struggling to keep up.

Real Time Race Data

A great feature of the Daytona Circuit was the real time race tracking available through their website. Combined with the free wifi, this allowed me to be stood watching at the side of the track with my iPhone constantly updating me on my husband’s position, current lap times and best laps – impossible to gauge from just watching the karts going past. The timings could be accessed by anyone online, not just people at the circuit so the #geekkarting hashtag was soon filled with colleagues of the drivers congratulating (or taunting) their friends on their positions. All the drivers also received emails in the evening with detailed information on their lap times for each of the races – great for data geeks.

Once the racing was over, everyone retired to the compound for the BBQ which went down a storm with everyone piling their plates high with burgers, sausages, chicken and salad – three hours of racing makes you hungry. This time allowed a lot of networking to take place, many of the attendees knew one another through Twitter usernames and there was a lot of putting faces to names. Everyone was in high spirits and the atmosphere was incredibly relaxed, despite the adrenaline which had just been flowing. Once people had finished eating, a short presentation was made for the winners, event organiser Alun Rowe (@alunr) thanked everybody for making the first event such great fun and the Daytona rep reminded everyone to drive safely on their way home. Printed sheets containing the driver information from the final race were given out and soon everyone was stood around comparing their times. Soon after, people began to leave, ourselves included. One group went on for a few drinks at the pub but as we had a very long drive home to collect our son, we unfortunately had to skip out on this.

This was the first of what is hoped to become a frequent event on the geek calendar, and based on how much everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, I imagine many will be queuing up to drive again. A week on from the event, it is still being discussed on Twitter and countless blog posts have been written by the attendees. For such a small event, the amount of online coverage could only have been generated by a group of social media savvy web geeks. I would definitely be keen on attending again, hopefully getting to watch my husband drive a kart whose engine didn’t give up causing him to miss out on several laps of racing and end up low on the grid for the final. Hopefully next time the word will have spread even further and we might even see some more women racers on track to give the boys a run for their money too.

Sophie Brown is the UK core contributor at GeekMom, a freelance writer and mum to one very smart toddler. She is a passionate X-Files fan and enjoys cross stitch and gaming.